Memory

Susan Neiman, a philosopher who studies Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past, examines how the United States can remember slavery and segregation.

How a monument that championed black sacrifice in the name of emancipation was forgotten.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum was deeply involved with the Ku Klux Klan while designing the Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, Ga.

Why removing the names of Confederates from military bases matters.

A review of "Escalante’s Dream: On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest."

Which songs will future generations use to characterize the decade?

A collaborative project that set out in the summer of 2020 to document the removal of monuments through both official and unofficial channels.

A whole vision of history seems to be leaving the stage.

The Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., has become a flashpoint in today’s reckoning with racist statues.

A new book systematically defends the American Founding against those who believe it was destined to end in nihilism.

Historical narratives of the United States have never not been shaped by an anxiety about the end of it all. Are we a new Rome or a new Zion?

In a newly discovered letter, the famed abolitionist wrote that ‘no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth'

The National Statuary Collection announced the unification of the former slave economy’s emotional heartland with the heart of national government.

June, PTSD Awareness month, is a time to recognize how trauma has shaped our history.

The man who supposedly never told a lie figured out how to stretch the truth when it came to human bondage.

Why does the U.S. Army name its bases after generals it defeated?

Keep in mind what it meant to the people who created it.

The truth about policies of Native American removal.

A celebration of emancipation in Texas is taking hold in the minds of Americans everywhere.

African American activists have long coupled these efforts with fighting against racist laws and racial violence.

For Baldwin, the past had always been bent in service of a lie. Could a true story be told?

Through slavery, Indian boarding schools, Japanese internment, mass incarceration, and anti-Communist wars against civilian populations in Latin America.

What would it mean to define the Civil War as a necessary and crucial final step in the long, even more tragic history of slavery in America?

Protesters are tearing down statues of Columbus and other villains of history. The true test will come when they reckon with their heroes.

As we approach the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings, we're going to see a lot of journalistic takes on them — many of them totally wrong.

It is time to remove the names of traitors like Benning and Bragg from our country’s most important military instillations.

As people have gathered across the country to oppose police violence, they have targeted statues, monuments, and buildings commemorating white supremacy.

The dangerous myth that blacks in bondage chose not to be free in revolutionary America.

The author goes looking for the history of telecommunication, and is left sitting in the slim shadow of a lightning rod, listening to a voice from beyond the grave.

Comparison to Nazism and fascism distracts us from how we made Trump over decades.